October, November & December

It’s hard to believe how quickly the last few months have gone. I feel like I blinked, and suddenly I’m thirty and Hollis is two months old and Linden is three and Jordan is thirty-four (we accidentally clustered all our birthdays within a two month span).

We soared through some of the highest highs of our small family’s life (bringing home Hollis, first smiles, watching Linden be the sweetest big brother ever) and some of the lowest lows (three ER visits in three weeks, sleepless nights worrying about Hollis’s breathing, Linden having a major allergic reaction to medication).

There’s lots I’d like to remember. Even the middle of the night snot sucking we did every couple of hours while Hollis was sick with RSV, and Linden’s stormy tantrums over small things like sandwiches as he adjusted to the idea of being a big brother, along with the good things: Linden’s excitement over his hand knitted mittens, our first longer stretches of sleep with Hollis, Hollis’s excited squeaks when he looks at us.

Some Linden-isms I’d like to remember: how he calls Jordan names like “Toodles,” “Big Lump,” and “Knucklehead.” The time he crawled into a tunnel of stacked shopping carts at Aldi. When we went adventuring in the woods and halfway through I stopped to nurse the baby, and he trooped along with everyone else for awhile, until I heard “MAMAAAAA” through the woods and he came running right into my arms. All the times he asked me to sit with him at the table while he ate snack, just to keep him company. Playing keepy-uppy with the yellow balloon and The Gunnywolf on hikes and chase before bed.

These last few months, we baked pies and cakes, picked pumpkins, chopped down and decorated our Christmas tree, lit our menorah, blew out birthday candles, snuggled with Omas and Opas, feasted on turkey, opened presents and hiked at dusk. Here’s the photo evidence.